It's the best display I've ever seen. Anywhere, period. And it makes a meaningful difference to the experience — it's not just a spec.

As good or better than the 4S camera, from what I could tell. You shouldn't really be shooting photos from your iPad because you look like a huge dork, but if you need to, this rear camera is finally worthy of the iPad.

Apple has managed to produce something that's truly beautiful to look at, and while we've yet to see the full potential of having this many pixels on a 9.7-inch slate, we're guessing a cadre of game developers are already hard at work in order to remedy that. Beyond being dazzling from a density standpoint, colors are sharp and accurate, and viewing angles are predictably ridiculous; even taking a peek from an extreme side angle gives way to a fairly solid image with next to no washout...zipping through home panes doesn't feel dramatically faster.

The pixels in the 2048 x 1536 display are, at regular arm's length, completely indistinguishable: it's only when you get up close that you can make them out...Viewing angles are huge, too, certainly on a par with what we've seen from Super AMOLED panels in recent months...Performance from the A5X dual-core processor – with its quadcore GPU – is swift, with apps loading and multitasking flipping through with zero lag. That's pretty much what we're used to from the A5, admittedly.

The text on the Retina Display is so sharp that we could barely believe our eyes. In fact, the app icons on the 2048 x 1536-pixel screen almost seem like they're floating above the 9.7-inch panel. During our brief hands-on time with the tablet, we were impressed with the improved color saturation as well (44 percent better) which made for more vibrant reds on CNN.com and much more rich photos in the new iPhoto app.

At 1.4 pounds, the new iPad has a bit more heft to it than the iPad 2′s 1.3-pound frame, and we noticed it when we picked up the device.

Thanks to the backside illuminated sensor, we could take a shot of our Canon camcorder on the display table that was quite sharp.

So, just what else is this display good for? During a demo of the Sky Gamblers sky fighting game, we were blown away by the level of the detail in the planes but also the water effects down below.

The make takeaway from all this is that the screen is as "luscious" as they say while the device is noticeably faster again that the iPad 2...So the screen really is crisp, the iPad (3rd generation) fast, and the experience as lovely as always.